A telltale sign of having
become the victim of propaganda is the eruption of anger, name-calling,
calumny, scapegoating, and insinuations when confronted with facts, ideas, or
arguments that pose a threat to the unmasking or refutation of the propaganda.
Such a reaction is itself a deliberate product of the propagandist, for it is a
built-in defense mechanism effectively precluding awareness of not only the
spurious content of the propaganda, but also its very existence in the mind of
the victim.

The amount, intensity, and
sophistication of the propaganda surrounding, distorting, and cloaking the
Israeli attacks on Gaza in December of 2008 is staggering. Nevertheless, some
things one just cannot hide. It is now indisputable for all but the most
brainwashed that the Israeli attacks on innocent Palestinians in Gaza were
gravely immoral. The Vatican condemned Israel’s actions, and so have the vast
majority of the countries of the world. What is also indisputable is that the
primary cause of the violence in Gaza, as well as virtually all the violence in
the Middle East for the past sixty years, is not primitive, home-made
“rockets,” pathetic weapons that killed less Israelis in seven years than the
state-of-the-art, American-produced “smart bombs” killed in seven days
(unconscionable as these rocket attacks were), nor “Islamic terrorists who hate
democracy and freedom,” but the unconscionable treatment of Palestinians by the
state of Israel, what can be accurately called ethnic cleansing and apartheid.
Cardinal Martino called Gaza a “concentration camp,” a quite deliberate
description, implying that Israel has treated the Palestinians in Gaza in a
manner not unlike the Germans’ treatment of the Jews in Warsaw during World War
II. As many reputable commentators have insisted, if Israel were willing to
observe the pre-1967 borders, a lasting peace with the Palestinian Arabs could
be arranged, and quite quickly. However, due to its Zionist/Talmudic ideology
of racial superiority and political hegemony, the State of Israel is
intractable about its “right” to the entire area of land, that is, its
prerogative to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians. Any person with even the
slightest sense of justice would condemn any
regime for deliberately murdering civilians.

Those who criticize Israel
are objecting, not to the existence of a state populated by Jews, but only to
policies that are immoral and illegal under international law, for Israel has
voluntarily agreed to abide by a UN Charter that forbids offensive wars of
aggression and interruptions of the peace. America has broken this charter in
Iraq, and this fact is also indisputable. Yet, those who make their objections
known are automatically accused of anti-Semitism for merely affirming these
facts, facts that cannot be objectively disputed by any rational and
good-willed person. Now, one can certainly understand a fanatical, Israeli
Zionist defending this kind of unlawful and illegal behavior, for being both
bereft of the light of Christ and possessed by a powerful, pernicious ideology
that permits acts that no Christian could ever condone, it would make logical
sense. However, fact that practicing, otherwise charitable, and otherwise
orthodox Catholics are defending the indefensible, and demonizing fellow
Catholics for not doing so, demands
an explanation.

What are we to conclude
regarding the lack of any criticism whatsoever by certain Catholics of the
Israeli regime in its recent attacks on Gaza, even when the Pope himself
condemned Israel’s violence, and even when the targeting of homes and hospitals
was apparent—due to the courageous Internet reporters—for all to see? It would
seem that these Catholics have somehow been led to believe that Israel is
exempt from all moral criticism. Now, for an Israeli to defend its nation’s
actions “right or wrong” can be chalked up to fanatical nationalism, but why
would Americans do so, and American Catholics for that matter! I think that
this disturbing phenomenon can be accounted for, as any disorder can, by sin.
In this case, I shall argue, it is the sin of racism. Racism usually connotes the condemnation of a person’s or
groups’ actions merely because of the racial identity of the person or group,
while completely prescinding from any evaluation of the moral quality of the
actions themselves. However, racism is also revealed in reverse, and in this mode it becomes a sort of racist idolatry.

What we are seeing in these
Catholics is the a priori defense ofgroup’s actions, rendering it immune
from the strictures of the universal moral law.Anti-Semite racists immorally condemn the actions of Jewish people regardless of the moral
quality of their actions; these Catholic racists, however, immorally celebrate, or at least refuse to condemn, immoral actions
simply because they are executed by Jews. Both are instances of the sin of
racism. (The blog “suicideofthewest.com”
is an exemplar of this kind of racist and idolatrous thinking among Catholics).
These Catholics relentlessly defend, with no exceptions, not only the recently
Israeli attack on Gaza, but also all
of Israeli’s acts of terror and violence beginning with the “Nakba,” the
ethnic cleansing of Palestine by the pre-Israeli army prior to the Deir Yassin
massacre in 1948. As Dr. J. P. Hubert of the excellent blog “Moral Philosophy and
Current Events” has explained, the Nakba marked the beginning of the theft
of Palestinian land that continues to this day, with the illegal Israeli
settlements in the West Bank, the inhumane blockade, and the recent invasion of
and massacre in Gaza. Of course, this is not to forget or, God forbid, justify the numerous acts of Palestinian
terror here; for, focusing on one group’s acts of terror is not necessarily to
exculpate the others. However, based upon these Catholics’ assignation of all blame for any violence in the Middle East to Muslims alone, to Hamas and
Hezbollah, or to anti-Semitism, that is, to any other group or ideology rather
than Israel and Zionism; it is reasonable to conclude that these Catholics are
thinking as reverse racists, as idolaters.

As long as the actions are
conducted in defense or in the name of Israel or Zionism, or any other
“special” race, nation, ideology, and religion, such actions are not to be
criticized, even if they are obviously morally objectionable according to
Catholic standards. This is an intolerable position for a Catholic to hold,
whether consciously or unconsciously. But, instead of recognizing this
idolatrous racism in themselves, these Catholics automatically assign their own
vices to their accusers, to those who manifestly do not think as racists and idolaters. Those Catholic rejecters of racism and idolatry, those
relatively few practicing, orthodox Catholics who have remained immune from the
brainwashing campaign of the Israeli and American Zionist propaganda machine,
such as Robert Sungenis and E. Michael Jones, are not cowed by threats of being
labeled as racists and anti-Semites. Yet it is these courageous Catholics who
are scapegoated. The question of the origin of this idolatrous racism among a
good number of orthodox, conservative, and even traditionalist Catholics is the
topic for another essay. Suffice it to say it has something to do with the
infiltration of neoconservatives into positions of Catholic leadership, such as
the late Father Neuhaus, George Weigel, and Michael Novak. In any event, having
even the slightest inclination to this kind of racial, idolatrous thinking is
supremely dangerous to one’s soul and to the souls of others, and any ideology
that either defends it or obscures its existence in one’s mind must be rejected
root and branch.

As Gil Bailie’s and Rene
Girard’s pioneering work on the origin and nature of violence reveals (see
especially Bailie’s Violence Unveiled
and Girard’s The Scapegoat), being an
authentic Christian means, almost more than anything else, being on the side of
the victims in all instances of violence. Jesus, being the sacrificial victim par excellence, is the Divine Defender
of Victims. Satan, on the other hand, is the demonic defender of the
victimizers. Though Hamas is no innocent victim, for it certainly shares some
of the blame in the death of innocent Palestinians by providing the
pretext—though, of course, not the justification—for Israel’s grossly
disproportionate use of force against them, those siding solely with Israel in the Gaza war, and those who refuse in principle to utter one word of
condemnation of the Israeli regime, or any regime, institution, group, or
person, for what are manifestly immoral acts, are in principle expressing their perennial loyalty to the victimizers.
This is pledging one’s allegiance not to Christ, but to anti-Christ.

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